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three years pass...
three years pass...
Extremely detailed piece by Daniel Marks that tries to sort leadoff hitters through the years into families, finishing with a ranking of the 25 greatest:
1. Rickey Henderson
2. Tim Raines
3. Kenny Lofton
4. Pete Rose
5, Paul Molitor
6. Richie Ashburn
7. Brett Butler
8. Ichiro Suzuki
9. Stan Hack
10. Craig Biggio
First thought is that the families are too specific--there's like 20 of them, when a more generalized six or seven would be more user-friendly. Carew's omission from the rankings is easily explained: he only led off 370 games. Boggs at #20 less defensible, I'd say, even with the disclaimer that "I do give a fair amount of weight to having done the job for a long time"--he led off almost 1,000 games, and ranks below a number of inferior hitters who led off somewhere between 1,000-1,300 games. Anyway, impressive piece.
http://www.billjamesonline.com/%e2%80%9clet_your_first_striker_always_be_the_coolest_hand_of_the_nine%e2%80%9d/
― clemenza, Wednesday, 6 July 2016 16:59 (seven years ago) link
Sorry, didn't realize that was behind the firewall. Almost always, if it's not by James it's publicly accessible.
― clemenza, Wednesday, 6 July 2016 21:44 (seven years ago) link
two years pass...
If he were to play next year, I bet he wouldn't score more than 70 runs.
― clemenza, Wednesday, 26 December 2018 05:08 (five years ago) link